Intellectual Suicide

Does the popular music of recent years tell us anything about the social history of Britain?
by Ian

The first problem in writing on this is: what is popular music?
And the second: when did "recent" years start?
Popular music is, I suppose, the music liked by most
of the population. The best way of finding out what that
is is by consulting record charts; but is this really
good enough? Popular music of long lasting quality is
generally slow to sell and would not feature in the charts
as prominently as an ephemeral title. And should you
consult both single-play and LP charts?

If you examine the best selling records of
the past few years, you will find that the vast majority
of the songs are simply meaningless lyrics put to six
bar tunes. These songs in themselves tell us nothing
about social history - but the fact that commercial
rubbish is guaranteed high sales does, however, tell us that
the record-buying public are not bothered about
the current economic, political or whatever situation.
When they are listening to music, they want to escape
from the crises in the world.

This tells us about the record-buying public.
But most of these are under thirty years of age, and
an extremely high proportion are still undergoing
education. Only occasionally will the older people
venture to such places as the HMV Shop or Rox
Records. When they do, they are more likely to buy
classical music, or records to give as presents to the
younger people. So again we see the problem of
identifying popular music.

Another difficulty is that some singers or
groups have mass following which, while large, are
small compared with the whole population. In the last
year or so, about five LPs have entered the charts at
Number One on the first week of issue, which means
that people conclude that they are extremely popular.
But in fact it is the mass following. This shows that
people like to be in groups of fans with their friends.
At the grammar or public schools, it is liable to be the
less commercial accepted music and the more commercial
new music which has the greatest following - whereas
comprehensive or secondary modern schools tend to
favour the more commercial music. From this we can
see that popular music is divided into strata:
you can tell what sort of person somebody is by
the music he listens to, if not exactly, at least to
a slight extent.

Only occasionally do songs protesting at things
break through the surface of commercialism or mass
following. If it achieves popularity, it becomes one of
those two: if it does not, it is not popular. That
is why it is so difficult for musicians such as Bob
Dylan or Tom Robinson to reach the top, stay there and
still sing protest songs. Bob Dylan's recent material
has, I find, been devoid of message, and TRB have
not been around long enough yet for people to see
where they are going. Few protest songs slip through the
net, and most end in oblivion.

The media told us in 1977 that punk rock was the
protest music for now-people. It had a hard-hitting
image and style which attacked all forms of
democracy directly. It gained popularity, they claimed,
because the vast majority of working class youth
were fed up with the commercial, sophisticated music and
the commercial, sophisticated society. They wanted the
return to basic music and straightforward society.

What nonsense! The working classes continue,
mainly, to like the muzak produced by such groups as
Abba and Boney M or the Bee Gees, while it is
the middle classes who have fallen for the music of
such groups as the Stranglers, the Jam and the Sex
Pistols, groups who, incidentally, by achieving a
large following, have defeated their original stance,
which was against the big bands.

These bands are now as commercial, showing that there is
no way out from our commercial society, showing how
the more you strive to leave any system, the closer
entwined to it you actually find you are.